James Joyce doesn’t teach time management, but fate is the great equalizer

I should honestly be working for a marketing company. I mean in the last 5 days since I took the GMAT I have gotten more e-mails about what I got and why am I keeping people waiting…the hype was building. It finally reached a crescendo last night when someone broke into my apartment to find out what I got on the GMAT. (That last one isn’t true, but I did get a lot of e-mails and I want to thank those who cared enough to drop me a line). So why you ask did I wait this long to deliver this tidbit of news? Well something has been happening behind the scenes here at the blog. An exciting thing, a somewhat disappointing thing, and things that will have a huge impact on my life. But before we get to that, here is rundown of what happened on my GMAT.

I arrived at the testing center at around 7:25 for my 8:00am test. Why, because I am neurotic about being early. As I am looking for a way into the locked building, a woman asks me if I am here to take a test. I told her I was and she told me to follow her and that she was running late, she was sick, and the other guy who was supposed to be here today has a pregnant wife, so he might be a little late, or just not show up at all. This woman is talking a mile a minute and is pretty much giving me a verbal rendition of her autobiography. I pretend to intently listen, while inside a fire was burning. One that would fuel me to achieve greatness on this test (at least I hoped it was that and not just gas…). Too make a long and frustrating story shorter, lets just say that the guy whose wife was going to have the baby, forgot to come into work because he though it was Columbus Day weekend and the center was closed. I didn’t start my test until about 8:20, so I was just hanging out with 14 other people for about an hour. One hour, to think about the test…my strategy, the score I needed. I think I freaked myself out a bit during that time because when I went in to take the test, I wasn’t as confident as I was when that fire was burning inside me (it turned out to just be gas…).

The test began well enough, answering questions left (or wrong) and right. Swatting all comers away with confidence that I was getting them right. I was on question 20, when I realized that I hadn’t looked at the clock yet. This isn’t unusual, as timing has never been my problem. When I looked at the clock, it was a moment of sheer terror. If it was portrayed in a movie, the camera would have zoomed in on my horrifying expression, while some eerie music plays in the background. I don’t remember the exact numbers in play here, but needless to say, I was pretty much screwed. I think I had 20 questions left for 30 minutes, or something insane like that! I immediately hit the panic button (there wasn’t an actual panic button, but a metaphorical panic button instead)! I start whizzing through problems by just narrowing down answer choices to 2 and then picking one. I don’t think that was one of the strategies that Manhattan GMAT recommends…I finally catch-up to where I am supposed to be and there are about 5 questions left. I answer those to the best of my knowledge, but the damage was done. Time management had ruined my Quant section for sure. After this emotional and physical beating I still had verbal to contend with…

I don’t know if it is the GMAT in general, or I have just been really lucky, but every official GMAT I have taken has started the verbal section off with a sentence correction question (my least favorite of the verbal questions). Despite that I make my way through this section without much fuss, but with a constant eye on the clock. I finish it off and I feel pretty good about verbal, but I just know that my quant score it going to tank my overall score. I click through the questions about my background and I get to the section that asks if I want to cancel my score. I seriously think about doing this, but I was always told to never, ever cancel your score, unless there is something ridiculous that happens, like a lion breaks into the testing facility and bites your leg off. So I don’t cancel my score. Out of nowhere someone breaks through the door into the testing center with a trombone and plays WA-WA-WAaaaaaaaaaa. I see my score up on screen….640. Just as I suspected my quant had destroyed a good test. My breakdown was a 40 for quant (8 points lower than last time) and a 38 for verbal (2 points higher than time). So what did I learn? Well first, James Joyce seemed to help me, but not as much as I would have liked. Secondly, and probably the most obvious…even it has never been a problem for you before ALWAYS CHECK THE CLOCK! Time management ruined my GMAT and my day…but all was not lost.

On Thursday of the week prior to the GMAT I was supposed to have a call with Randall Sawyer of the Johnson School to discuss what I could do as a re-applicant to better my profile. The call didn’t happen because he wasn’t in the office. I don’t know if he had something happen, or the admin did not block that time out on his calendar, but they get a pass…once is a mistake and I can handle that. I was bummed out, but not totally destroyed.

Also on Thursday of that week, I had a 2nd interview at a bank in the city (this bank may or may not sponsor Liverpool F.C.). After 2.5 hours of interviews I emerged confident that I would be receiving an offer, but then I was told that because of funding reasons, the position would be put on hold until January. I was thrilled about that because I knew that I would find out about Cornell, Columbia, BU, and ND before January, so if I got in somewhere I could politely decline an offer, or if I didn’t get in…the new gig would have been a nice fall back option.

So what ended up happening? Well, the new bank was so impressed with me, that they ended up putting through an exception to make me an offer, which was incredibly generous, like 25% higher than what I make now generous! The offer came on Monday, which is incidentally the day that I was going to hit the submit button on my Cornell app. After talking it over with my wife, my family, my extended family, random people on the street, and a homeless guy who was trying to catch a unicorn….I decided that I am not going to be applying to B-School this year and I am accepting this new position. The past few days have been a whirlwind, but I finally got the official offer letter last night and I gave my two weeks notice this morning.

I am saddened to leave my current job, as the people around here really make the company what it is. Although I will miss the people I work with, I know that this is in my best interest now and for my future. Once I made the decision I decided that I should call Randall Sawyer to let him know that I wouldn’t be applying. I thought that he deserved to know why I wasn’t applying because he had been so helpful to me throughout the process. I have too much respect for him to just leave him guessing. I called Randall and while he was disappointed that I wasn’t reapplying, he said that getting an offer in this job market is something I should be proud of. I thanked him for his help, he thanked me for the call and we said goodbye, but not before he added that B-School would always be there for me in a couple of years if I still want it.

So now what? Well the blog dies….I don’t really know why I would keep it around if I am not planning on applying to B-school for at least 2 years. I had a great time blogging and sharing my successes (I don’t know how many there were but there had to be some, right, right????) and failures (multiple, soul crushing failures). I believe that all things happen for a reason. I was meant to take this job and to not go to B-School. Why? I have not idea…but it is going to be really fun to find out!

Before putting a knife in this guy, I just want to thank everyone who read,  commented, was a fan of, casually glanced at, or even hated my blog. Hopefully I have helped you in some small way, and if not, hopefully you had fun reading about my life. I want to thank my wife and my family for supporting me throughout the process. This experience took time away that I could have spent with them, but they always understood and they never let it become a problem. They were my biggest supporters and my best friends.  Love you guys!

I want to thank Clear Admit for featuring me in the Friday From the Frontlines. I want to thank anyone who has ever done a guest post for me and lightened the burden of having to come up with a brilliant post everyday. Lastly, I want to thank John Byrne from Poets and Quants for featuring my blog on his website, his stuff is cutting edge and he isn’t afraid to give you his opinion on things. Plus, he is a Jersey guy, so we have that bond going already. Go to his site people…you won’t be disappointed.

If you ever have a question about applying or want to mock me for coming this far only to stop about 1/4 of an inch from the finish line, I can be reached at sgargiulomba at gmail.com. So I bid all of you adieu and like Ryan Seacrest, I’M OUT! (cue curtain and applause)

The weekend that was…and the week ahead

Is the weekend over already? Seriously? I could have sworn that I had another day in there somewhere.

My weekend consisted entirely of studying, taking practice tests, and re-writing my Columbia/Cornell essays. First thing is first: I am a freakin’ genius! I don’t know if it had anything to do with my strategy of reading some James Joyce, but my reading comp. scores were off the charts good! After having to really concentrate to understand the ramblings of Joyce, the RC section seemed like a pleasant read. Maybe it was that I was more confident, maybe I got easy questions, but either way I am going to keep doing what I am doing.  My score for the test was once again a 700, 45Q and 40V. I am pretty happy with this and I am interested to see how this will translate to the real thing next weekend. I can’t believe it is here already! It seems like yesterday that I was buying the online course from Manhattan GMAT. In total I scored 700 3 times, I scored 660 and lastly I scored a 640. This is good for an average score of 680, which is 22 points higher than the last time I was taking practice tests. Hopefully I see a similar score bump on my test on Saturday.

The week ahead is a hectic one to say the least. Tonight I am attending a  Columbia event in NYC, which focuses on Finance and Economics. It should be what I need to put the finishing touches on my essays this weekend. On Wednesday I have an industry event after work, which I might have to skip out on to study. Thursday I am taking the day off to study and to speak with Randall Sawyer. On Friday, I rest. I take it easy before test day and go to bed early. Saturday is my test and that night I have a celebratory dinner & drinks with friends. Sunday will probably be finishing off essay and tweaking things, after my Columbia event and any hints I pick up from Randall. Sleep?…overrated!

Desperate times call for desperate measures!

So I was thinking about how to best solve my verbal woes and upon reviewing my performance on the last test I noticed that my Reading Comp was not as good as normal. I seemed to be missing the questions in the upper echelon. How do I plan to reverse this verbal slide you ask? My doing something that I swore I would never do, something so vile that it makes me think of nails across a chalkboard, or styrofoam coming out of a box. I have decided to read some James Joyce. Not just any Joyce novel, but “A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man.” I “read” this book in high-school (and by read I mean I got about half way through and then went running for the Cliff’s Notes) and I hated it so much that I swore off any further Joyce readings. I figure that if I can get through the stream of consciousness ramblings of Stephen Dedalus, then Reading Comp. shouldn’t be a problem for me.

Also, I am hoping that this is actually a decent book that I just didn’t give a chance in high school. It seems to be pretty critically acclaimed, so there has to be a reason, right? So this is one part of a multi-pronged assault on the GMAT. It will also entail taking a day off from work on Thursday to study more. Are any of you struggling in verbal? Quant? What are your plans of assault? Hopefully they are less painful than stream of consciousness!

MBA Tour Rewind

Big news of the weekend is that I attended the NYC MBA Tour. If you don’t know what it is, the MBA Tour is an event, usually held at a hotel, where multiple business schools from around the country come to give presentations and answer attendees questions. It is also a great opportunity to speak with the people who are going to be reading your applications, so they can start to put faces with names.

This years event was held at the Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street in NYC. This place always brings back some fond memories for me, as the last time I was there was during the summer of 2005. I was an intern at Bear Stearns…the now defunct I-Bank…and I was attending the Bear Stearns technology conference. It was my first real look behind the curtain at the world of the research analyst. I loved every second of it. I will always be grateful to them for that opportunity, as it  began my love of equity research.

So on Sunday morning I trekked into the city and visited 4 school presentations, and chatted with some admissions people.The first presentation I saw was from the Kelley School of Business. While it was a good presentation and the speaker was very good at selling the school, I had a few reservations. First I think that Kelley would have some difficulty in bringing in recruiters from top NYC banks/financial firms. This would definitely be a school where you would have to travel to NYC to even get in front of people. Second, I don’t think that the Kelley NYC presence is all that strong. When asked about this, the presenter (Tim Smith), said that there were a lot of Kelley undergrads that come to be analysts in NYC. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the MBA alums! In conclusion, very good school…but I don’t think it is right for me.

I then sat in on a Boston University presentation. I was very impressed with the speaker and her energy for the program. While this isn’t a top MBA program by any means, it seems like it would be a nice fit for me. Boston is a hub for asset management and that might help me in my goal of becoming a portfolio manager. BU is also in the midst of a strong push to make its B-School more highly regarded, so the value of my degree could grow over the course of my career. Conclusion – definitely applying

Next was Georgetown. I had high hope for G-dubbs, but the presentation kind of left me a little flat on the school. There wasn’t much exciting about it, the presenter wasn’t all that engaging, and I didn’t really get a good feel about the school. This could have just been an off day, or I could have just been hungry and grumpy at this point. Either way, I don’t think I am going to apply here…the school seemed much more political than I would like (I guess you have to expect that, with it being in DC and all.) Conclusion – I am bummed out about this one. I thought it would be a great name, a great location, and a great fit…but I seemed to be let down by the last one. With that being said, I still might take a trip down there on Columbus Day weekend.

I saved the best for last…Cornell. The apple of my eye, the one that got away, and the seeded raspberry preserve to my crunchy peanut butter (If you are not a member of my family you probably have no idea what this means, but I am cool with that.). The presentation began a little late because the NYU presentation ran a little over its allotted time (ugh…who needs those Violets anyway, just kidding). This gave me a chance to say hello to Randall Sawyer, who is the Assistant Dean of Admissions for the Johnson School. If you have read the blog in the past, you probably know that I have a borderline man crush on this guy. He is a really nice guy and he genuinely wants every applicant to find the school that is right for him or her. After exchanging hello’s the presentation began. As Randall spoke about the Johnson School, it was pretty much the equivalent of the Pied Piper …except he wasn’t leading a bunch of rats, he was leading the future leaders of America. After the presentation I went to speak with him again. He apologized to me and said that he wasn’t exactly sure who I was, but during the presentation he remembered. He asked if I was going to re-apply and I said that I was. I asked if he had any advice for a re-applicant. He said that I should give him a call and we can set some time aside to talk. He then apologized for my time on the wait list, saying that there was only 1 no-show in the class. I thanked him and told him that I would send him an e-mail today.

After this exchange I was pretty much on cloud 9…I was re-energized by the presentations and my chat with Randall. Hopefully it can carry me the rest of the way. There are only 2 weeks left until R1 apps are due! Plus the freakin’ GMAT! I am in total melt-down freak-out mode…but at this point, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Ooops I did it again!

I had been doing well recently with my studying and my practice tests. I had been scoring 700, with my quant score  around 45 and my verbal score around 40. Since I scored a 48 on the real GMAT I figured that I should study a little more quant than verbal last week to try and bump my quant score nearer to 48. That part worked, somewhat, with a score of 46 for this weekend. The problem was that I ended up neglecting verbal, like I always do. i don’t know why I always do this, or how I get stuck in that trap, but I always loose track of verbal studying. I scored a 34 on verbal this weekend….giving me a 660 on my most recent practice test. My verbal feel hard, and I am going to have to see what I messed up on and then try to rectify those mistakes before test day, which is rapidly approaching!

Speaking of coming up quickly, application day is screaming like a freight train towards me and I don’t know if I am going to be able to finish my Yale application in time. I will certainly have time for more revisions on my Cornell and Columbia apps, but Yale has quite a few essays and I think I might need to scrap Yale R1 in order to concentrate on making Cornell and Columbia the best that they can be. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, as conventional wisdom seems to indicate that R1 vs. R2 doesn’t really matter that much, unless R1 is ED or EA. I set myself for a hectic week to start October, as I have my GMAT on Oct. 2nd…then Cornell is due the 5th, and then Columbia the 6th! I should have Columbia done the week prior, but you know how these things tend to go (I can just picture myself hitting submit at 11:59 pm on the 6th!)…

Other than the GMAT/application happenings, the Red Bulls won, Notre Dame lost (kick the field goal Brain, kick the field goal), the Yankees slipped into a virtual tie with Tampa, and the Redskins somehow defeated the Cowgirls. A middling weekend, with middling weather. Hopefully this week can start out on a good note, verbal….here I come!

The game is in us!

If you don’t know already, the US is bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. FIFA is sending an inspection team to the US next week to take a look at our sites and the marketing plan that US Soccer is putting together. Part of that plan is to say that they signed up 1 million people in support of this bid. The count currently stands around 993,000….they need only 7,000 more people to reach their goal. I am calling on all of you to sign the petition here and bring that number over 1 million before the inspectors get here. I don’t want you to go and just vote though, I need some old-school Chicago style support here. That means I want you to sign it as many times as it will let you, then sign it for people you like, people you hate, people you kind of know, people who have been dead for 1000’s of years (seriously if no one signs the petition in the name of Jesus Christ, I will be pretty upset), and lastly  sign your pet up as well. Get it over a million, bring the World Cup here and you won’t be disappointed.

Groundhog Day & Weekend Rewind

With all due respect to Punxsutawney Phil, Staten Island Chuck, and any other shadow seeing rodents in the US, I am talking about the movie with Bill Murray. In the movie, Bill Murray keeps waking up to the same day. It didn’t matter what he did or if he died during the course of that day, he would still wake up to the weather report on the radio in the morning. That is pretty much how I felt this weekend. I took my practice test and thought that I did terrible on Quant and very well on Verbal. When I clicked the submit button, the score read 700, with a 45 Q and a 40 V. The exact same score I had received last week. At first I thought that this was an error because I didn’t feel like I could have/should have scored that high after the limited amount of studying I did during the week. After logging out and logging back into the test section, it indeed showed that same score. I was very happy with it, and it is somewhat validating to know that I can post two 700 scores in back to back weeks, even though my studying wasn’t what it should have been. This gives me confidence that moving forward I can increase these scores, especially quant, as I felt that I was guessing quite a bit (although most were educated guesses).

After taking the test, I relaxed for most of Sunday. I cooked a little bit…my first venture into making polenta. It has an interesting consistency, but once I drowned it with a sausage-tomato sauce the dish turned out pretty well. I also FINALLY got around to writing a first draft of the first Columbia essay. I am sending it to my reviewer tomorrow and then will hope to do 2 more revisions before sending in the application.  I am going to start working on revising and editing my Cornell essays this week. At some point I also have to write the re-application essay, which shouldn’t be that hard of an essay, as I have quite a bit to write about. I am already looking forward to essay writing being completed, and I haven’t even really started yet!

In sports news:

Yankees are tied for first, Fulham tied Blackpool (disappointing result, but glad to get a point after how the game played out), and the Red Bulls smacked San Jose 2-0. A good sports weekend for my teams, save for Donovan McNabb’s injury for the Redskins. Hopefully he can be back for the first game of the season.

Hope everyone had a great weekend…

A life interrupted & a Team Spencer pic

My life has stopped. In the past two days, I haven’t run, I haven’t studied, I’m not even sure if I have slept. Why has my life stopped you may ask, because I moved yesterday. Is there anything more interrupting in your life? Where did we move you might ask yourself? Let this sink in for two seconds before trying to comprehend it, as your brain might actually explode…we moved back to the exact same building that we moved out of 1 year ago! What, what, what!?! Yep, I paid for someone to move my stuff from a building to another and then paid them again to move it back. Fantastic feeling.

I have been without TV or internet at home for 2 days now and I looked like a crack addict last night. I was curled up in the corner muttering to myself…thank God someone is coming today to install everything for me. Pretty soon I was going to start selling my body on the street for some internet or TV time. This has obviously impacted my amount of study time, which has been 0 for the past 2 days. I am planning on hitting the books pretty hard this weekend and delaying my Manhattan GMAT test until Sunday instead of my normal Saturday test.

Lastly, I wanted to leave you with this picture of my team at the Damon Runyon 5k Run/Walk….for those of you that don’t know, I am the incredibly handsome one in the center, with the smoking hot wife on my arm. What, you don’t see anyone matching that description? Ok I am the incredibly average looking gentleman in the center with the smoking hot wife on my arm. OK fine, I’m # 1226.

From Left to Right (Brother, Father, Friend, Sister, Hot Mama, Yours Truly, Uncle, Cousin, Cousin)

First 700, GMAT Scheduled, & Essays started

I know its only 10 points more than I scored on the actual GMAT, but 700 sounds soooo much better then 690 doesn’t it…I took a practice test on Saturday morning, around 8:30. When I clicked the final button on my Manhattan GMAT CAT I thought I had done reasonably well, but I didn’t think I would be hitting 700! I was really excited about this, as it seems that my hard work is paying off. My breakdown was as follows:

Quant: 45

Verbal: 40

Overall: 700

AWA: 6.0 (I think I deserved it….I am obviously kidding about this, there is no generated score for the AWAs)

I was happy with my performance in Verbal, as it was 4 points higher than what I scored on the real thing. I believe that confidence is a huge part of the GMAT and I had loads of it on Saturday. I prepared myself mentally before the test started by accepting that the test was going to be very hard, no matter how well I was doing. I think this helped me not get discouraged, keep my pacing, and ultimately score better on the test.

I was so excited about the result that I schedule my actual GMAT for October 2nd, which is the first Saturday of the month. It is scheduled for 8am in Lyndhurst, NJ (same place I took the previous 2, I am a creature of habit!). My goal from here on out is to try and consistently score in the 700 range, but not to get too discouraged if a 660 pops into the equation. Bad tests just happen, for whatever reason, they just happen sometimes, so believing that I can score 700+ shouldn’t

Weekend Rewind – Yankee Stadium Style

I am a posting machine today…truth be told, both of my bosses are on vacation, so while the cats away…the mice will post on their MBA applicant blogs. That’s the saying right?

Probably a little late, seeing as how it is Thursday and all, but I wanted to let everyone know about something I participated in this weekend that benefited a great cause and was an incredible experience. I ran in the Damon Runyon 5k at Yankee Stadium this past weekend! This is a 5k that is run through the concourses and on the warning track of Yankee Stadium. The proceeds go to benefit cancer research. My family organized a team that all together raised about $1k for the event (Go Team Spencer! – more on that later). Running and raising money for worthy charities is something that I really enjoy doing, so when you add that together with Yankee Stadium, how could I miss this?

I got to run 2 laps around the warning track of Yankee Stadium…btw I definitely pretended to make a leaping catch over the wall when I ran by it. Pretty fantastic catch, if I do say so myself! While you were running they had camera crews there that showed you up on the big HD screen that is in center field. Goosebump type stuff here people…The only problem with the event was that during this 3.1 mile run there were 268 that we had to climb! 268! I can honestly say that this was the hardest 5k I have ever done, my legs are just coming back from the beating that they took on Sunday. All in all, it was a great event that everyone who is runner (or a Yankee fan) should think about doing next year.

The funny/awkward part of the event was my family’s team, Team Spencer. Spencer is our family dog, and he did in fact have squamous cell cancer of the ear last year. So we decided it would be great to make shirts that had a picture of him on the back. So we had the shirts printed up and we all wore them during the race. The only problem was that many other people had the same idea, except the picture, or message on the back was of a loved one who had passed away. So we are the assholes that have a picture of their dog on the back of their shirts. Not very good foresight on our part…thankfully no one ever called us out on it, and at least one woman thought that it was sweet of us to run for our dog, but I am pretty sure that everyone else was throwing visual daggers our way. Note to self for next year…no dog pictures!